In a mobile communication system, supporting mobility of a user equipment is mandatory. To this end, the user equipment continuously measures a quality of a serving cell currently providing a service and a quality of a neighboring cell. The user equipment reports a measurement result to a network at a proper time and the network then provides optimal mobility to the user equipment via handover and the like.
In order to provide information for helping a service provider operate the network as well as the mobility support, the user equipment performs a measurement for the specific purpose set up by the network and may be then able to report the corresponding measurement result to the network. For instance, the user equipment may receive broadcast information of a specific cell determined by the network. Based on the received broadcast information, the user equipment is able to report a cell identity (called a global cell identity) of the specific cell, location identification information (e.g., tracking area code) on a location to which the specific cell belongs, and other cell information (e.g., a presence or non-presence of membership in CSG (closed subscriber group) cell) to a serving cell.
While a user equipment is moving, if the user equipment confirms that a quality of a specific area is very poor via measurement, it may able to report location information on cells having poor quality and a result of the corresponding cell measurement to a network. Based on the report on the measurement results of user equipment helping the operation of the network, optimization of the network can be enhanced.
On performing measurement evaluation for a measurement reporting by a user equipment, all cells detected and measured by the user equipment are considered as measurement evaluation objects. Hence, even if a base station is interested in qualities of specific cells, and more particularly, in qualities of specific neighbor cells from the user equipment, the user equipment reports all cells that meet the measurement reporting reference among the cells detected and measured by the corresponding user equipment. In doing so, unnecessary measurement reporting may occur. Especially, if a base station sets up measurement of the user equipment on a plurality of frequencies to maintain optimal performance of the user equipment that use CA (carrier aggregation) and a plurality of cells or frequencies simultaneously, it may cause a problem that unnecessary measurements may be frequently performed.